The Consecration Has Been Done?

Christ or Chaos ^ | May 8, 2004 | Dr. Thomas Drolesky

[Land of the Irish]

Ping

[Dajjal]

"The Vatican is not pursuing any proselytism policy. It has no goal of making Russia a Catholic nation."

Fatima ping

[Canticle_of_Deborah]

You know that feeling where the person standing next to you is so bad you are certain lightning will strike at any minute and you can't move away fast enough?

That's where I'm at right now, just waiting. You could not pay me to be in the vicinity of some of our hierarchy.

[Nevski]

Roll eyes.

Nevski (Orthodox)

[PetroniusMaximus]

***Russia is not New Guinea or some African country where it is necessary to preach Christianity. Russia is a country with more than one thousand years of Christian culture," ***


Coming from a religious authority, this has to be one of the most blindly ignorant statements I have ever read!

Each generation has to be won to Christ anew. There is no such thing as a "second generation" Christian.

People don't come to salvation though "Christian culture" they come to salvation through individual and personal contact with Christ and acceptance of him as their Lord.

[Smocker]

Good article from Thomas Drolesky, and no, the Consecration has not been done.

[sinkspur]

Sister Lucia says it has.

You going to believe her, or the fruitcake Gruner?

[gbcdoj]

Editor, The Remnant: The Letter of Dr. Branca Paul as reproduced in your recent article by Mr. Sungenis (02/29/04 Remnant) only states the former’s opinion of what Sister Lucia said; it does not quote what she said. As such, in my opinion, it has no probative value as to what Sr. Lucia actually did say.

I’ve heard a Doctor of Theology support the 1984 consecration on the basis that “an intention to consecrate Russia” suffices to make an act of consecration of Russia valid “no matter what words are used.”

It seems sufficiently apparent that such a humble and obedient and charitable sister as Sr. Lucia, as evidenced over so many years of religious life, would accept the claim that Russia was consecrated on the basis of such an argument – especially if she is being told that there are controversies over her former statements in regard to the non-validity of the consecration of 1984.

In this one needs to suppose no malice or any particular coercive force against her. Nor does her statement make the consecration valid or not. The validity of a consecration is something objective, and it requires that the thing to be consecrated be named, either properly or in with a term(s) referring to it. If the Pope had said, “I consecrate Russia” or “I consecrate that nation which Our Lady asked at Fatima to be consecrated,” or even “I consecrate every nation, all together and each individually,” then one would presume the validity. If “entrust” is used instead or Russia is not named or adverted to in the singular, the no consecration of Russia as a singular nation takes place. Nor can the Pope advert to some prior secret intention of naming Russia under the words, “especially those nations which are most in need…”, as such a public religious act requires a public intention for validity and these words refer to a collective, not to singulars.

God is Truth, and He will not accept as true what is based on error. It is unsound to presuppose the consecration of 1984 as valid in the case of Russia: no testimony for or against by Sister Lucia would change that conclusion, since it depends not on her testimony or even that of some vision or angel, but theological principles and the public acts of the Roman Pontiff, who himself said in public prayer to Our Lady in Rome after this consecration, “the consecration which You still await from us.”

Br. Alexis Bugnolo
Letters to the Editor, The Remnant, April 15, 2004 issue.

Gruner's a nut, though.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Well, folks, there you have it. "The Vatican is not pursuing any proselytism policy. It has no goal of making Russia a Catholic nation."

Russia is already a Catholic nation. Her people are not heretics, but dissidents or schismatics. You can't convert someone to a faith they already hold. In the same vein, do the Polish National Catholics, SSPX, or Chinese Patriotic Association need to change faiths, or do they need to submit to the governance of the Bishop of Rome? Obviously the later, unlike say, a Methodist or a Muslim.

Let's be brutally frank: to assert that the Catholic Church is not interested in the conversion of souls from Orthodoxy to Catholicism is to assert a belief that is alien to Catholic truth and representative of the sort of syncretist, pan-Christianity specifically condemned by Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos in 1928.

This implies that Orthodoxy is not Catholicism, when the Russian Orthodox actually style themselves Catholic (we call them Orthodox in English for the same reason we term the East Roman Empire "Byzantium", and for the same reason we don't call eastern Christians what they and their Muslim opressors call themselves "Romans" - to avoid historic truths uncomfortable to the dominant Anglo-French perspective in the west). For this to be true, for Orthodoxy to be "not Catholicism", one should be able to date the exact moment when Russia, which started off Catholic in AD 988 in union with both Old Rome and Constantinople New Rome, suddenly gave it up and stopped being Catholic, and changed the faith it originally professed in AD 988. I'm waiting for this data to be given. If of course, it can be shown that Russia never changed her faith professed, then of course, she remains as Catholic as she was in AD 988. The question then becomes why Rome, and K'yiv and Moscow, are no longer in mutual communion. A solid data point for this is the unions of Brest and Uzhorod in 1596 and 1646. Those diocese entering communion with Rome were not required to renounce any errors, but rather to profess obedience to Rome as the first, while changing nothing of their faith and worship (at least that's what the treaties said). If there was nothing to be renounced in 1646, one wonders what has changed since then.

One of the most important fruits of the actual consecration of Russia to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart by a pope and all of the world's bishops is the conversion of Russia to the Catholic Faith,

Where was this ever promised? This gets bandied about so much that most take it for granted, yet it seems to have no foundation in fact. Its rather like the intention Pius XI added to the Leonine Prayers, that they be said for the "liberty of the Church in Russia" (something accomplished in 1991 with the fall of Communism). This has been thoroughly confused with this same nebulous "conversion of Russia to Catholicism" by too many who should know better.

the same sort of miraculous, widespread and almost instantaneous conversion that took place in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America after Our Lady appeared to Saint Juan Diego on December 9, 1531.

The conversion of Mexico and Latin America was hardly "instantaneous", but was a work spread out over many decades. Otherwise, the Franciscans would have no reason to be planting new missions to convert heathen Indians in New Spain in the late 1700's.

Over twenty years later, however, Luigi Cardinal Ciappi, O.P., who was for many years the theologian of the papal household, said that the Third Secret of Fatima dealt with apostasy within the Church, starting at the very top. Please tell me how not seeking the conversion of Russia to the Catholic Faith is not apostasy.

This must be that "real third secret" being hidden by the Satanists in the Vatican. Right? Have I got that straight?

Laboring under the delusion that Bolshevism ended when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was dissolved on December 25, 1991

Aparently this is a delusion must Russians, Ukranians, and Central Europeans are suffering too. The delusion of thinking they are no longer opressed by Bolshevik atheists.

How can a priest in Europe, of all places, which had been so convulsed by events that could have been prevented if Our Lady's words had been heeded, live thirty-five years of his priesthood (1946-1981) without giving much thought to Our Lady's apparitions in Fatima?

Probably because it is totally irrelevant to teaching the Catholic Faith. Had the message been a vital part of Catholicism, Our Lord would have included it in the public revelation entrusted to His Holy Apostles.

Little children in Catholic schools in the United States were taught to foster devotion to Our Lady's Fatima requests.

This sure worked wonders in ensuring the post-war generation raised on this type of Catholicsm "kept the faith" didn't it? What sort of intellectual pride is it that prevents a priest and a bishop and an archbishop and a pope from paying careful attention to an actual appearance of the Mother of God to warn about the dangers posed by the spreading of the errors of Russia?

Indeed, for all of Pope John Paul II's opposition to crimes against the inviolability of innocent human life, he does not seem to realize that it was in Russia under Vladimir Lenin that abortion on demand first reared its ugly head under state sponsorship in the year of 1918.

Abortion was legal in the US prior to around 1860. Most countries have long allowed fairly widespread abortion under various guises such as "life of the Mother" excuses. Is there a significant moral difference between allowing "abortion on demand" and abortion by craniotomy for various medical excuses? I don't see it. Maybe Mr. Drolesky does.

Abortion is thus very much one of the errors of Russia that crystallize the problems of modernity.

Around the same time Russia was allowing widespread abortion, so were other places, such as Weimar Germany.

Indeed, the errors of Russia are really the errors of modernity and Modernism. That is, the errors enshrined in Bolshevism are the crystallization of false philosophies and currents that began to issue during some aspects of the Renaissance before taking full bloom in the aftermath of the Protestant Revolt and the subsequent rise of Freemasonry.

So the primary sicknesses coming out of England are somehow the errors of Russia in Communism? I must have missed the Protestant-Freemason conspiracy that was behind Bolshevism being introduced in Russia as Leninism.

These mental gymnastics are difficult!

[FormerLib]

Nice post, thanks.

[Smocker]

Actually, I believe Pope John Paul II, when he said we were still praying and awaiting the Consecration.

I'm not sure why you choose to show disrespect to Fr. Gruner, a consecrated priest, I would say that is not very polite of you.

[sinkspur]

I'm not sure why you choose to show disrespect to Fr. Gruner, a consecrated priest, I would say that is not very polite of you.

He's been suspended from his priestly duties. Or did you not know that?

[gbcdoj]

Russia is already a Catholic nation. Her people are not heretics, but dissidents or schismatics.

Schismatics are not Catholics.

For any man to be able to prove his Catholic faith and affirm that he is truly a Catholic, he must be able to convince the Apostolic See of this. For this See is predominant and with it the faithful of the whole Church should agree.[7] And the man who abandons the See of Peter can only be falsely confident that he is in the Church.[8] As a result, that man is already a schismatic and a sinner who establishes a see in opposition to the unique See of the blessed Peter[9] from which the rights of sacred communion derive for all men.[10]

9. This fact was well known to the illustrious bishops of the Eastern Churches. Hence at the Council of Constantinople held in the year 536, Mennas the bishop of that city affirmed openly with the approval of the fathers, "We follow and obey the Apostolic See, as Your Charity realizes and we consider those in communion with it to be in communion with us, and we too condemn the men condemned by it."[11] Even more clearly and emphatically St. Maximus, abbot of Chrysopolis, and a confessor of the faith, in refer ring to Pyrrhus the Monothelite, declared: "If he wants neither to be nor to be called a heretic, he toes not need to satisfy random individuals of his orthodoxy, for this is excessive and unreasonable. But just as all men have been scandalized at him since the chief man was scandalized, so also when that one has been satisfied, all men will doubtless be satisfied. He should hasten to satisfy the Roman See before all others. For when this See has been satisfied, all men everywhere will join in declaring him pious and orthodox. For that man wastes his words who thinks that men like me must be persuaded and beguiled when he has not yet satisfied and beseeched the blessed Pope of the holy Roman Church. From the incarnate word of God Himself as well as from the conclusions and sacred canons of all holy councils, the Apostolic See has been granted the command, authority and power of binding and loosing for all God's holy churches in the entire world."[12] For this reason John, Bishop of Constantinople, solemnly declared-and the entire Eighth Ecumenical Council did so later—"that the names of those who were separated from communion with the Catholic Church, that is of those who did not agree in all matters with the Apostolic See, are not to be read out during the sacred mysteries."[13] This plainly meant that they did not recognize those men as true Catholics. All these traditions dictate that whoever the Roman Pontiff judges to be a schismatic for not expressly admitting and reverencing his power must stop calling himself Catholic. (Bl. Pius IX, Encyclical Quartus Supra On the Church in Armenia)

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Do schismatics hold the Catholic faith or not?

If you agree with the terminology of Catholicism, obviously they do, because a schismatic is not necessarily a heretic.

One who holds the Catholic faith may be called a Catholic. It is of course understood that those who are not in Communion with the Catholic Church are not Catholics properly so called.

To say that the Orthodox do not hold the Catholic faith is to accuse them of heresy. When an accusation of heresy is made against a formerly Catholic party, it is incumbent upon the accuser to point to the matter of the heresy, and the date it was adopted. Can you do so with the Christians of Russia?

[gbcdoj]

To say that the Orthodox do not hold the Catholic faith is to accuse them of heresy. When an accusation of heresy is made against a formerly Catholic party, it is incumbent upon the accuser to point to the matter of the heresy, and the date it was adopted. Can you do so with the Christians of Russia?

The Russian Orthodox Church does not believe in the universal and immediate jurisdiction of the Pope, nor the infallibility of the "ex cathedra" definitions of the Pope. Furthermore, they profess that Christian marriage can be dissolved in total contradiction to the Council of Trent, a doctrine that Leo XIII called a "baneful heresy" (Arcanum Divinae §33). That's three right there.

[Nevski]

"That's three right there."

That's three what? You're response seems to imply that we do, or we should, recognize the catholicity of the councils from which those dogmas were promulgated.

Nevski

[gbcdoj]

Well, Hermann is a Catholic, so he recognizes those councils. From the Catholic perspective, the Orthodox reject dogmas proposed by Ecumenical Councils.

[Nevski]

Make that "your" response. By the way, here are a few Catholic theologians on the matters of papal infallibility and supremacy:

"Many of the Eastern Fathers who are rightly acknowledged to be the greatest and most representative and are, moreover, so considered by the universal church, do not offer us any more evidence of the primacy. Their writings show that they recognized the primacy of the Apostle Peter, that they regarded the See of Rome as the prima sedes playing a major part in the Catholic communion-we are recalling, for example, the writings of St. John Chrysostom and of St. Basil who addressed himself to Rome in the midst of the difficulties of the schism of Antioch-but they provide us with no theological statement on the universal primacy of Rome by divine right. The same can be said of St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Basil, St. John Chrysostom, St. John Damascene" (Yves Congar, After Nine Hundred Years (New York: Fordham University, 1959), pp. 61-62).

"It does sometimes happen that some Fathers understood a passage in a way which does not agree with later church teaching. One example: the interpretation of Peter’s confession in Matthew 16:16-19. Except at Rome, this passage was not applied by the Fathers to the papal primacy; they worked out an exegesis at the level of their own ecclesiological thought, more anthropological and spiritual than juridical (Yves Congar, Tradition and Traditions" (New York: Macmillan, 1966), p. 398).

"I believe that the East had a very poor conception of the Roman primacy. The East did not see in it what Rome herself saw and what the West saw in Rome, that is to say, a continuation of the primacy of St. Peter. The bishop of Rome was more than the successor of Peter on his cathedra, he was Peter perpetuated, invested with Peter's responsibility and power. The East has never understood this perpetuity. St. Basil ignored it, as did St. Gregory Nazianzen and St. John Chrysostom. In the writings of the great Eastern Fathers, the authority of the Bishop of Rome is an authority of singular grandeur, but in these writings it is not considered so by divine right" (Catholic historian Pierre Batifoll, cited by Yves Congar, After Nine Hundred Years (New York: Fordham University, 1959), pp. 61-62).

"To my knowledge, nobody seems to have challenged Tierney's contention that the entire first millenium is entirely silent on papal infallibility and that, therefore, Vatican I's contention concerning the early roots of the doctrine is difficult to maintain. Practically the only objection of some substance raised against Tierney seems to be his interpretation of the twelfth century decretists: is the future dogma of Vatican I implicitly contained in them? Even after granting for the sake of argument that it is-something that Tierney does not concede in any way-the formidable obstacle of the first millenium remains untouched. In my opinion his critics have fired their guns on a secondary target (the medieval decretists and theologians) leaving the disturbing silence of the first millenium out of consideration. Nobody seems to have been able to adduce any documentary proof to show that this long silence was illusory, that the doctrine was-at least implicitly-already known and held in the early centuries. It is not easy to see how a given doctrine can be maintained to be of apostolic origin when a thousand years of tradition do not echo it in any way" (Catholic theologoan Luis Bermejo, Infallibility on Trial (Westminster: Christian Classics, 1992), pp. 164-165).

[Smocker]

Really? was it a legitimate suspension? by someone with the legal authority to do so? Or was it one of those anonymous Vatican type papers issued to discredit a person without having followed proper procedures?
Regardless, once a priest, always a priest, suspended or not, the indelible mark on a man's soul when he becomes a priest is on him for eternity, one must therefore attempt to exercise civility when refering to priests.